


A Song Unsung

by CobaltStargazer



Category: Criminal Minds
Genre: Adultery, Angst, Canon Divergence, Emotional Hurt, F/F, F/M, Marriage, Mentions of alcoholism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-24
Updated: 2014-08-24
Packaged: 2018-02-14 14:13:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,916
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2194803
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CobaltStargazer/pseuds/CobaltStargazer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When James returns home, he and his wife - and her lover  - have a long talk.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Song Unsung

**Author's Note:**

> This is both a sequel and a coda to _Rekindling the Fire_ . Alex/Erin lives!

He was trying to remember if there had been signs, if there had been signs and he had just ignored them. Despite Alex's assurances to the contrary, he couldn't help but feel that he should have been more attentive, more present in the marriage.

It had taken James three days to arrange for someone to take his place, at least temporarily, and then the flight to Washington had cost him another twenty hours. Jet lag was heavy on his shoulders, but he didn't want to sleep. He'd dozed off on the plane, and he'd had to wake up because he'd dreamed of his wife making love to Erin Strauss. He ran his fingers through his hair as he headed up the driveway, digging into his pocket for his keys.

The house was quiet when he let himself in, and he wondered if she was here, if they were together. Alex had said it was the first time in a long time before Erin was abducted, but he wasn't sure he could ever believe another word that came out of her mouth again. He went to the bottom of the stairs after poking his head into the other room and finding it empty, cleared his throat.

"Alex?"

The linguist was upstairs in the bedroom, and when she heard her husband's voice her entire body tightened up. James was here, and he knew, and he knew because she'd told him. She looked at herself in the mirror attached to the dresser, let out a breath. Then she padded to the top of the staircase and stood on the landing.

"Hey."

He looked up at her, met her eyes, and he couldn't decide if he hated her or not. He'd loved her, been _in_ love with her, for a long time, and now suddenly out of the clear blue nothing she'd told him she loved someone else. He put his hand on the railing, looking for an anchor as she started down the stairs towards him. He could see the urge to hug him in her expression, and he let go of the bannister and stepped away from the bottom of the stairs. He didn't want her touching him right now.

Alex had been on the verge of lifting her arms for an embrace, but when James moved away from her she didn't pursue it. He had the right to be as angry as he wanted to be. The fact that she'd never meant to hurt him was irrelevant. She watched the line of her husband's back as he looked around at things in the living room, tried to figure out where to put herself so that she wasn't too close to him.

"Where is she?" His voice was a rasp, as if he were near tears, but his posture remained upright. He knew that she knew he was hurt, she was too smart not to know it, but he wasn't going to reveal exactly how much this had crushed him. "Is she here? Upstairs?"

"No, she's not."

Not that Erin hadn't offered to be there, because she had. She'd wanted to take the brunt of James' anger on herself, to spare Alex the pain, but the brunette had declined. "I did this to him, not you," she'd said firmly, and at last the other woman had acquiesced. 

"Anytime he's ready to see me, I can come there or he can come to me. Whatever he wants." They'd parted ways with a quick kiss, but they hadn't been intimate since the night before the Replicator kidnapped her. It wasn't a fresh start, but it _was_ a new page in their relationship, and neither of them wanted to rush into anything. In the Now, Alex wished for the warmth of Erin's presence, but she knew she'd had to face James alone first. She'd cuckolded him, and that meant he was the injured party.

"When did it start? I have to believe it was before Amerithrax. Given what she did to you afterwards, I can't see you being with her that way later."

He was sitting on the couch now, looking down at his hands, which dangled limply between his knees. She was still standing, and he looked up at her questioningly. Alex swallowed, and she took a chair next to the sofa. Out of reach, but close enough that he could see her eyes. The silence lingered, and finally she broke it.

"It was before. And then during. It ended when I was demoted. I never expected it to happen again. It's why I spent so much time avoiding her when I re-joined the unit. I didn't even want to talk to her, much less...well..."

James made a dubious noise. "So when did you forgive her? I remember how you talked about her, the things you said. When did you decide to let bygones be bygones?" He was playing with his wedding ring, turning the gold band around and around on his finger. 

"I didn't forgive her," Alex clarified quietly. "She kept wanting to talk it out, to be friends again, but I didn't forgive what happened. I _haven't_ forgiven her, actually." 

"You forgave her enough to fuck her though, didn't you, Alex?" 

The bitterness in his voice made her flinch, and she looked away. To hear him call it that, refer to what she'd done with Erin as 'fucking', made it dirty." And maybe it _was_ dirty, but the love underneath it wasn't. "James..."

And ah God, but he didn't want to hurt her. Well, okay, that wasn't _entirely_ true. He did want to hurt her, because she was hurting him. How many times had she held a piece of herself away from him because she'd given it to Erin? How could she risk her life to save a woman who'd betrayed her so thoroughly? James looked at his wife sideways, then turned his attention towards her more fully. The look on his face was stuck somewhere between 'miserable' and 'furious'.

"Do you love her, Alex?" he asked in a ragged voice. "Did you mean what you said before I got on that plane, that you love her? And if you love her, do you want to be with her?" 

It would be the easiest thing in the world to say no, to call a halt to this before it went too far. And the truth was, Alex _didn't_ know what she wanted, which was maddening, because decisiveness was one of her strongest character traits. She'd known when she was younger that she'd wanted a space in the Bureau, and everything in her professional life had been geared towards achieving that. Even after she was demoted and her career severely sidetracked, her dogged pursuit of restoring her reputation had preceded her everywhere she went. She'd always known what she wanted, what her goals were. She looked at her husband's face, and it felt like she was standing on the precipice of a very high cliff, with the edge of it crumbling beneath her feet. 

"Yeah," she said after what felt like an eternity. "Yes. Yes, I love her. As for ever being with her again, I don't know. I think that's what she wants, but there's a lot to work out." He opened his mouth to speak, and she lifted a hand. "She says she's ready to talk whenever you are. She says you deserve to scream at her if you want to." 

"That's big of her," James said sourly, but the fight had gone out of his voice. He looked at Alex with a rueful expression, and after a minute he held his arms out. He needed the comfort of a hug. Even if she'd been faithless, he'd loved her for too long to just cut the cord. 

"How did this happen to us, Alex?" He asked it with his chin hooked over her shoulder, his hands laced together at the small of her back. 

"I don't know, James." She was holding him tightly, her eyes closed. "I don't know." 

*************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************** 

_The next day, Erin was in her kitchen fixing breakfast when she heard the front doorbell ring. The kids were with their father, so she was alone in the house. She was back at work, having been cleared both by her doctor and the higher-ups. The Replicator was a slowly-fading memory. She felt as if she'd been given a whole new lease on things._

"Oh. James." 

She'd expected it, of course, mentally and emotionally girded herself in preparation for it. She and Alex's husband knew one another distantly, meeting at official functions and work-related social gatherings. After she and the brunette had become lovers, she'd kept her distance from him out of worry that she'd give them away. His expression was composed, but his eyes were troubled. 

"So." 

"So." 

She moved aside, and he stepped into the house. Like Alex, he'd only been here once, years before she'd re-decorated. He studied the hallway as he proceeded down it, then hovered on the threshold of the living room until she said, "Please, have a seat. Make yourself comfortable." 

He chose a straight-backed chair near the picture window. Erin considered offering him something to drink, then decided against it. This was not a social call, and she doubted her attempt to lessen the tension would be appreciated or successful. The blonde took a seat in the chair close to where James sat. 

"How long did you fuck my wife?" 

The lack of preamble was surprising, but Erin recovered quickly enough. "Six months, just shy of seven. And I didn't think of it as fucking. I tried to break things off before anything happened, mostly out of concern for myself. After we...started, the pull was too strong. But it was never just fucking." 

"So I _can_ call it adultery, right? If fucking is a poor word choice, how does adultery sound?" 

Erin looked away, because she knew he was right. "I know you're angry," she said in a low voice. "That's why I offered to be at your house when you came home, so I could take the blame. I deserve it. If I hadn't gone to Indianapolis with her to work that case..." 

He made a chopping gesture with his left hand, because Jesus Christ he _didn't_ want to hear about how it started, and she closed her mouth. Erin he could hate, probably because he couldn't let himself hate Alex. They sat in silence for what felt like an eternity. He'd slept on the couch last night, his wife in their bedroom upstairs. His eyes narrowed as he looked at the blonde closely. 

"In our house? In our _bed_?" 

"No. Never." Erin shook her head emphatically. She could give him that much, that she hadn't touched Alex in the rooms they'd shared. He looked slightly mollified by that, but only slightly. 

"How could you do that to her, then? Flush her career if she meant...whatever she meant to you?" His eyes were still narrowed, and he held her gaze unflinchingly. She sighed into the space between them. 

"Because I was a coward," she said simply. "There were others before her, but none of them got a piece of me the way she did. And none since. Later I told myself that the drinking caused it, but I realized once I was sober that I let fear get in the way. I left her gutted to save my own ass and to chase her away, and I don't know if I can ever really get past that with her. I want to, but the ball is in her court." Pause. "Hers _and_ yours." 

He was studying her as she talked, and when she fell silent he continued to look at her. He didn't know what he'd expected from her, but it wasn't this. This calm acceptance that she was to blame for hurting Alex, and her willingness now to throw herself on the proverbial sword where he was concerned, probably shouldn't have mattered, but it sort of did. He was still incredibly angry with both of them, and maybe he even hated Erin despite her lack of hostility, but...well... 

As if she could read his thoughts, she said, "If you want to hate someone, James, hate me, not her." 

"I don't need your permission." His voice was nettled, and he added a glare to the mix for good measure. 

"No, you don't," Erin agreed softly. "But I've caused Alex enough pain and heartache. If there's a bad guy here, it's me. I'd like to avoid hurting her any further." 

His brow furrowed as he watched her face, and he said in an aggrieved tone, "I don't understand _any_ of this." 

"I don't think any of us do. The last thing I expected when Alex came back was that she'd still give a damn, and I believe her when she says she doesn't know what to do with the information. I can't defend what this must be doing to you, and I can't even explain it, but I do know that something's still there." 

James looked down at his hands. The gold band on his left index finger gleamed mellowly in the light of the lamp. Could he live with it, knowing that Alex's feelings had changed? They'd been apart so often that he felt as if he _must_ have contributed to it somehow, that if he'd stayed closer she wouldn't have had room for whatever else she felt. He didn't feel noble right now, not noble enough to just give her up. He would have to do some hard reflecting, consider if what he wanted was what was best in the long run. 

"I have to go." He got up from the chair, then paradoxically stood there looking lost. 

"Can I do anything?" 

He laughed, and the sound was bitter and wounded and made her look away again. "No, Erin. I really think you've done enough." 

James let himself out, and the blonde sat quietly for a few minutes. Then she got up and went to lock the door. Whatever happened next, it was Alex's decision. 

*************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************** 

A week went by. Erin worked, and Alex kept to herself in the office. The blonde was having to force herself to be patient, to not demand an answer. Patience was one of the things she'd learned in the Program, and she knew she needed to exercise some. It sometimes felt as if she were constantly holding her breath. 

One day as she was leaving the building, the brunette caught up to her, saying, "Can we talk? Just for a few minutes?" 

"Of course. I'm on my way out, but you can come back if you still need to clear your desk." 

Neither of them could decide who should get in the elevator first, and finally Alex took the lead. Her stomach was tight with nervous tension. She was trying not to fidget, but it was an uphill battle. When the elevator opened onto the lobby, she accompanied the other woman outside. The day was bright and cold. The two of them walked to Erin's car, then looked at each other in silence. 

"James left this morning. We're going to try a trial separation." Alex said it in a low voice as the wind picked up and ruffled her hair. "A different kind of separation than the ones we usually have," she added ruefully. "No phone calls, no Skype. He says we both need time to think, decide what we really want." 

Erin took her lower lip between her teeth, and she felt for both Alex and James. When she and Paul had divorced, it was devastating, both for the children and because she'd been giving up one of her crutches. She pondered the wisdom of trying to hug the brunette, decided against it. The wind was brisk, making her cheeks sting. 

"Is there anything you need? Something I can do?" 

Alex took the half-step that was necessary to close the distance, put her arms around the blonde. It wouldn't have felt right to do so before, with everything so up in the air, but now with time to think she had a little room to breathe. After a second, Erin slipped her arms around the other woman's waist. 

"Just this," the linguist murmured, and the blonde's arms tightened. "Hold me like this, just for a minute." 

"For as long as you want." Erin's throat was impossibly tight. The future was a blank, but it was always a blank. But with Alex this close, anything felt possible. 

"I had a dream that you died," the brunette said. "That we got there too late and Curtis killed you, and I never saw you again. I couldn't breathe when I woke up." 

"Well, you can see that I'm right here, can't you?" Still looking over the other woman's shoulder, Alex nodded. 

"I love you, and if you aren't fed up with waiting for me, I'd like...I'd like to see what happens. With us. I don't know how long the separation will last. James said at least three months, and I didn't want to disagree. I've put him through enough, he doesn't need to endure my trying to set terms." 

And that was all Erin had wanted, for the door to still be open. She was alive, and that meant anything was possible. Three months. They had at least three months. Right at the moment, that seemed like a _very_ long time. 


End file.
